


lover of the dead

by plantyourtreeswithme



Category: The Hobbit (Jackson Movies)
Genre: Bilbo grieves, Flashbacks, I wrote a majority of this in algebra today so I apologize if it's bad, M/M, Nostalgia, Post-Battle of Five Armies, it's sad :(
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2015-09-22
Updated: 2015-09-22
Packaged: 2018-04-22 22:41:39
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,773
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/4853327
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/plantyourtreeswithme/pseuds/plantyourtreeswithme
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Ah, <em>he thought with an ironic smile as he wiped his tears away,</em> but perhaps I was just meant to love the dead.</p>
            </blockquote>





	lover of the dead

**Author's Note:**

> Happy Hobbit Day, everyone :)
> 
> I've used an html feature that translates Khuzdul if you scroll your mouse over it. It's really cool and available [here](http://plantyourtreeswithme.tumblr.com/post/125435570772/hi-first-of-all-i-want-to-say-that-your-writing) if you want to use it. Translations are also available at the end if you're on mobile.

_Tea doesn't always fix everything,_ Bilbo thought as he set his cup down on its saucer with a soft  _clink_.

It was his birthday, and, much to the general outrage of Hobbiton, he had cancelled the celebrations. "It's a bit of a family emergency," he recited each time an angered relative or neighbor knocked at his door. "You see, my cousins have died."

 _Just like everyone else in my life I've ever cared about,_ he added to himself as he shut and locked the door again.

When Balin and Bofur had visited in early Winterfilth, the three of them had compiled a timeline of their journey from a few decades ago. Bilbo had laughed raucously when Balin had realized that they'd arrived in Laketown on the first of Blotmath, his fifty-first birthday.

After they left, he cried for hours. Not even twenty years could heal those wounds.

Prim and Drogo had been absolutely wonderful; they'd known something was up the moment he'd returned. For two months, they had not ceased to visit him every day, bringing cakes and tea every few visits to cheer him up (even his year-long journey couldn't dull his sweet tooth, and they knew that).

On the first anniversary of  _his_ death, Prim finally managed to get it out of him. It was just the two of them that day (Drogo had taken ill), and Bilbo's cousin could somehow tell, despite his protests, that he was feeling off.

 "Why don't you tell me what's bothering you, dear?" she asked, setting an extra large plate of scones - his favorite, yet he ended up throwing them out two weeks later - down on the table next to the armchair he was curled up in.

Then it had all come spilling out - the tale he had abstained from telling for over a year for fear of what it would reduce him to.

"What  _really_ happened last year, Bilbo? Something horrendous, I'm sure, from the way you're acting."

"No," he said, a smile on his face as tears formed in his eyes, "it was absolutely beautiful."

"But you seem so sad..."

"That's because I fell in love, Prim. And it was the saddest thing that's ever happened to me."

Despite the blurriness of his vision, he did not cry. Perhaps Prim's presence was keeping him from letting his tears fall; he never seemed to be able to shed a single tear when anyone else was around, only when he was alone.

~~That was what he was in the end: alone. Even though what remained of the Company still took the time to send a raven each month, and Primula and Drogo made a point to check up on him weekly, he was still alone.~~

He told Prim more each day, slowly coming to terms with the fact that if he didn't talk about  _him_ , he would go insane. He never mentioned names, choosing to stick with the little details that had only ever mattered to him.

"He was a horribly jealous sort. Once there was a Lakeman who I was good friends with, and he nearly threw a fit once he realized that." "He was the wealthiest person in Middle-earth, but his riches lay not in gold, you understand, but in the bonds he made." "He had these lovely eyes that could match the intensity of the stars. Oh, but when he fell, Prim, they were horrible..."

On and on like that for months, until Prim seemed to know Thorin almost as well as Bilbo did. She never once asked his name, having left Bilbo to decide when to give it to her.

Four years passed, and he finally told her.

"Thorin."

"Hmm?" She looked up from her crocheting, perplexed. ~~Bilbo had a painful flashback to a night when Bofur had made a bawdy joke about his doilies.~~

"His name was Thorin Oakenshield, son of Thráin, son of Thrór, king under the Mountain." Oh, he felt _so_ guilty reciting memorized titles that were not his own, that belonged to the long dead...

"And you loved him?"

He gave her a slight nod. "And I loved him."

 

* * *

 

Fifteen years passed, and Bilbo found a single gray hair. Prim announced that she was pregnant, and he could not have been happier.

He had finally forgiven Thorin for leaving him behind.

They named him Frodo and brought him around for Sunday tea every week. The curly-haired faunt delighted Bilbo; even more so when they discovered that Frodo shared Bilbo's birthday. "He will come of age when I hit my gross," Bilbo joked with Drogo. "What a party we shall have to throw!"

Prim and Drogo never lived to see the day.

 _A boating incident, of all things,_ Bilbo thought grimly as he rose from his chintz armchair and padded softly down the main hall of Bag End.  _How terribly unhobbitish._

He had overcome his fear of water - which was natural to all hobbits - long ago. It was, in fact, the anniversary of their arrival by barrel, if Balin's calculations were correct (and they always were).

And it was also his and Frodo's birthday.

Two o'clock wasn't too late to pay a visit to the Brandybuck side of the Shire, was it?

No; no, it wasn't too late to go and see his red-eyed "nephew" (they were really second cousins, probably removed a few times somewhere along the line, but what did it matter?) that couldn't understand where his parents had gone. Bilbo had been like that once - wondering why in Arda his parents had left him alone, his nose running and mouth clamped shut, and staying under the care of Aunt Belba and Uncle Rudiger until he felt better. He was perfectly capable of taking care of himself, of course, but Belba had insisted.

Dinodas, Prim's older brother, had told Bilbo in passing at the market that Frodo was staying with Dora Baggins, Drogo's sister famous throughout the Shire for her correspondence. Bilbo had often advised her to start a column in the paper - the "Bramblebury Gazette," as it was beginning to be called, and hardly an official newsletter, just a few scraps of local gossip about the market thrown together each month - but she had declined, preferring to keep dealing out entire scrolls filled with advice to her relatives instead.

He visited her smial in Brandy Hall while she was out, having gained permission to enter an hour earlier. "You can go and see Frodo anytime," she had said amiably in the street, a bundle of quills tucked under her arm, "just make sure you knock and say it's you. He doesn't much like surprises nowadays."

Poor lad.

 

* * *

 

He didn't quite know how he ended up adopting Frodo, but he did.

It had been a very short process, as the Mayor of Michel Delving - Will Witfoot at the time, lovely personality, must have tea and biscuits again sometime - didn't even think twice to deem Bilbo as Frodo's best-suited legal guardian.

"Oh, Baggins," Witfoot said, a jovial smile on his face, "they say you're a bit mad from that journey you went on a few years ago, but aren't we all? And anyway, you don't seem like the untrustworthy sort. Drogo" - who had been a government official, blast him - "has always spoken most highly of you, and Frodo obviously adores you, as well. Shall we get all this paperwork done and over with in time for dinner, then?"

Frodo's things were already packed - he seemed to have been expecting something like this to happen - when Bilbo came back to Brandy Hall to collect him.

"You've got everything already, lad?" Silent nod. "And you're sure you're alright coming with me?" Silent nod. A brief silence. "Really?"

"Yes, of course, Uncle Bilbo," the faunt said, giving him what had to be his first smile in days.

"All right, then, let's away, m'lad. I've got a room already set up for you at home, and you'll have it all to your own, won't that be nice?"

 

* * *

 

"What's this, Uncle Bilbo?"

Frodo was twenty-two and holding a tattered, leather-bound book with sturdy metal clasps in his hands.

"Eh? Speak up, lad, you know I've trouble hearing you," Bilbo said, not bothering to give the book a second glance. He'd forgotten how many times he'd pored over the vast collection of novels he had scattered about the hobbit-hole; he'd probably already read the one his lad was showing him right now...

"I can't read this, Uncle," Frodo said, setting it down gently on Bilbo's desk. "It's not Sindarin or Westron or anything I recognize. Can you tell me what it says?"

"Hmm." He opened it to the first page, feeling the weathered parchment between his index finger and thumb. "I don't..."

 

_ Nungbâha-ê - _

 

He slit the pad of his thumb on the sharpest corner of the page, and a drop of blood dripped down onto it.

"Oh, damn," he said, putting his thumb in his mouth and sucking on it to release the pain. "Frodo, I'm going to clean this, and the herbs'll make Bag End smell rather nasty for a few hours. Go find Sam and do whatever it is you misbehaving teeangers do for a while, will you?"

His nephew grinned. "Of course, Uncle."

A few minutes later, there was the sound of the front door closing. Bilbo reopened the journal - which he had slammed shut as soon as he had realized what it was written in - cautiously, as if he was afraid something would spring out of the pages.

 

_ Nungbâha-ê,_

_ Ammâ mathurkhmâ ni Zaram'itnîn, ra e mamakhhmi tada 'azâg-zun ma inlêkh azafr - _

 

He could not bring himself to keep reading.

~~When exactly had he learned Khuzdul?~~

Bilbo threw the book across the room with a furious yell. "Curse it,  _curse it_!" he screamed, his voice cracking as he yelled at a decibel his vocal chords couldn't handle. " _A'lâju Mahal_ , Thorin Oakenshield! When exactly did you take over my life? _Why did you leave me here alone to rot with nothing but a golden ring and a head packed full of memories that are so painful I feel I might explode?_ "

He should have died at the age of fifty-one, hand-in-hand with a dwarven king and an elven sword at his side.

Frodo came back three hours later, and Bilbo was grateful that he did not mention his still-open cut from earlier. He held the boy tightly to him and wept silently, clutching the only thing he had left tightly.

 _Ah,_ he thought with an ironic smile as he wiped his tears away,  _but perhaps I was just meant to love the dead._

He held Frodo even tighter at the thought.

**Author's Note:**

> The Bramblebury Gazette is an actual, lovely thing made by fans, and it's available right [here](https://sites.google.com/a/brambleburygazette.com/bramblebury-gazette/home) for enjoyment. In this fic, I mentioned it being completely unofficial, and, analogous with the site, it was only _properly_ organized around 1418 Shire Reckoning (TA 3018).
> 
>  **Khuzdul Translations (in order of appearance)**  
>  _Nungbâha-ê -_ \- My lovable idiot (endearing term) -  
>  _Nungbâha-ê, Ammâ mathurkhmâ ni Zaram'itnîn, ra e mamakhhmi tada 'azâg-zun ma inlêkh azafr -_ \- My lovable idiot (endearing term), We have advanced into Laketown, and I have found that your eyes are shining like -  
>  _A'lâju Mahal_ \- you shame of Mahal


End file.
